Comment by presentation
2 years ago
It’s a spectrum, it’s multidimensional and it changes over time though.
I love myself computers and probably more so earlier in my career than now, but I also like influencing people (often through code, with a focus less on algorithmic elegance but instead more on setting patterns, tooling, and APIs that influence how others build around them); and I also enjoy the challenge of aligning the pleasure of a juicy piece of elegant code against the pleasure of positive business outcomes. I think that makes me neither a “boring business person” nor a diehard code nerd, but somewhere at the intersection with attributes in other directions not captured by either stereotype.
That said, if you really are 100% motivated by abstract technical challenges, then maybe academia is more for you than industry is. Or working at the small slice of companies that truly make their bread and butter on cutting edge technical excellence and not, say, applying tried and true tools to some underserved niche.
I do find the “algorithm nerd” charisma also tends to intersect with having warped views of how the world operates and weak self-awareness, so maybe easier said than personally realized.
> That said, if you really are 100% motivated by abstract technical challenges, then maybe academia is more for you than industry is.
Of course. Such people very typically attempt to get a foothold in academia. The central reason why they nevertheless leave academia is because of the precarious job situation.
Hello! I'm just starting my career as a dev now and I am definitely more drawn to academia and research than to the business world. Could you point me to some resources where I can learn more about companies or projects that work researching CS/programming topics?
Thank you in advance.
If you are drawn to research, look at the affiliations of the authors of papers that you like. There are pockets like INRIA, Galois, Tarides, but it really depends on what research you are interested in.